‘Sanctuary for Undocumented’
In “INS Investigating Churches That Aid Aliens” (Metro, Sept. 24), INS Los Angeles District Director Ernest Gustafson and INS Western Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell are quoted as saying that the church leaders at Dolores Mission and Our Lady Queen of Angels church “encourage” lawlessness. They connect the stance of Fathers Olivares, Boyle and Kennedy, on behalf of the refugees finding support in their churches, with the destruction of $10,000 worth of windows at INS headquarters at the Federal Building.
Is this insinuation founded on the truth? Or is it a means of “validating” the INS threats to continue their criminal investigation of these two Catholic sanctuary churches?
I have the utmost respect for these three courageous brother priests of mine. And here at my parish, St. Vincent de Paul, at Adams and Figueroa, where every fifth parishioner is from Central America, the people are making another connection. They see what the priests and others like them are doing as desperately needed by the Central American refugees among us. They connect the names “Placita Olvera” and “Mission Dolores” with human rights for those who cannot return to their countries. They connect these places of refuge with the rights to life and to work as human beings, since the right to life for them is so very tenuous in their own homelands.
On Part I of the same edition, there is another article with which I connect all of this. On Tuesday of this same week, in San Francisco, El Salvador, Salvadoran soldiers slaughtered four teachers and six other villagers with hand grenades and rifle fire. All this, within earshot of family members, who were not permitted by the soldiers to recover the bodies of their loved ones until the next day.
Gustafson and Ezell are making “the wrong connection” in their desire to send all undocumented Central Americans home by force and by pressure on those protecting their human rights. Fathers Olivares, Boyle, and Kennedy are making the right connection!
REV. PHILIP VAN LINDEN
Los Angeles
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